Brandeis raises record $138 million as it bets on ‘reinventing’ the liberal arts

Brandeis University raised $138 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, the largest single-year fundraising total in its 78-year history, the university announced Wednesday.

The haul was powered by a $25 million gift from trustee Karen Richards Sachs ’83 and her husband, David A. Sachs — the biggest single alumni gift Brandeis has ever received — and by 25 separate gifts of $1 million or more, including four of at least $10 million. The university said that is the most “transformational” gifts it has recorded in a single year.

The announcement lands as Brandeis opens the school year under the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts, President Arthur Levine’s sweeping overhaul of the curriculum and academic structure, and as the university prepares to publicly launch a fundraising campaign in October called The Brandeis Promise: From the Classroom to the Street.

“This remarkable success reflects our community’s confidence in the Brandeis mission and its innovative plan to reinvent the liberal arts,” said Ronald Ratner ’69, a trustee serving as campaign co-chair during the campaign’s leadership phase.

Ratner said donors had stepped forward to support a model that aims “to educate our students with one foot in the classroom and one foot in the street.”

What the money will do

Brandeis said $80 million of the total supports programs and initiatives across the university as current-use funds — money that can be spent immediately rather than held in the endowment. Another $20 million is directed at the campus community, and $13.5 million in flexible cash gifts will flow through the Brandeis Fund to support access, opportunity and innovation.

The Sachs gift, announced over commencement weekend in May, honors Sachs’ mother, Dorothy “Dot” Richards, P’83, and will pay for the Dorothy Richards Campus Commons — already nicknamed “The Dot” — a student hub next to the residence hall complex now under construction on the South Street campus. The university describes it as an open, shared destination intended to draw the whole student body together, paired with expanded student programming.

A second major commitment came from Marc Better, Ph.D. ’82, and his partner, Thomas Baker, who gave $10 million with no restrictions on its use, leaving the university free to spend it where officials judge the need is greatest.

Donors across the community

Brandeis said the giving came from a broad base: nearly 5,000 alumni, 1,000 families, 5,000 members of the Brandeis National Committee and more than 3,000 friends of the university.

Faculty and students described the practical effect of that support. Flora Cassen, the inaugural Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness, said philanthropy paid for her graduate education and research and endowed her position, and that a gift from the Korman family this year is helping train doctoral students to teach Jewish studies at universities nationwide.

“An investment in one scholar can ultimately shape the education of thousands of students,” Cassen said.

Nataly Dubovskaya ’26 credited a donor-funded scholarship with making her degree possible. “Knowing that someone believed in and supported my academic journey has been incredibly motivating,” she said.

Fundraising against financial headwinds

The record year comes after a stretch of financial strain at Waltham’s largest private university. Brandeis cut about 60 positions in May 2024 amid enrollment declines and budget deficits, and faculty in March 2025 approved Levine’s plan to merge the professional schools with arts and sciences programs into four new academic units, a restructuring aimed partly at drawing more undergraduates and more tuition revenue.

The university has been discounting more than 60% of its sticker price — north of $90,000 a year with room and board — to fill its seats, Levine told GBH News last December.

The comprehensive campaign that goes public in October is Brandeis’ first in 16 years. Administrators told faculty last fall that the campaign had raised $365 million toward a goal of at least $750 million, according to The Justice, the student newspaper.

Under the Brandeis Plan, students entering this fall receive both an academic and a career adviser, are required to complete an internship or apprenticeship, and will graduate with a second, competency-based transcript documenting skills employers value. A $1 million Carnegie Corp. of New York grant in February is funding the pilot of that transcript.